


Meridian

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Headspace, Season/Series 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 01:50:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4244949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You think you're a storm, chaos swirling around you, catching everyone in the vicinity in the path of your destruction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meridian

You think you're a storm, chaos swirling around you, catching everyone in the vicinity in the path of your destruction.

Here's the thing, though: storms are a force of nature, not a creation of man. There are contributing factors, sure; deforestation that leads to erosion that facilitates a landslide, carbon emissions that contribute to global warming that melts ice caps and leads to floods. But the vast majority are caused by a confluence of factors out of anyone's control, and all humanity can do is play a guessing game, calculate the odds. Eighty percent chance of snow. Forty percent chance those tropical winds will whip themselves up into a hurricane. Fifty percent chance that after a life of instability, of fear, of outright abuse, a child will get into college instead of getting back behind the wheel of his father's car, instead of going back on the road.

Here's the thing: if you take away the center, you don't get rid of the storm. You just lose the calm that was making it bearable in the first place.

You understand yourself as poorly as you understand the weather.

\--

You think you're poison, slowly killing everyone around you.

But here's the thing: poison is a game of quantities. It's cyanide that makes apples sweet. A peach’s fuzz hides a pit filled with arsenic. Peppers burn going down because of capsaicin, the same chemical that can be used to strip paint off a building.

Even water can be a poison. Too much and your blood dilutes, becoming so useless you eventually die. Too little water, though, and you'll die just the same.

You think your presence is killing them. You've never stopped to consider what your absence might do.

\--

You think you’re a wasteland, barren and desolate, incapable of supporting life.

But here’s the thing: the world is full of survivors. At this very moment there are organisms living in deep sea vents turning toxins into life. There are parrots flourishing in the crater of a volcano full of lethal fumes. There are thorny lizards crawling across burning sand, drinking in drops of moisture through their skin.

Humans are no exception. People have been finding ways to live in all sorts of inhospitable climes for thousands of years. They manage to survive in deserts, in frozen tundras. There are people out there right now who have fallen in love with the way the sun sets behind the dunes, with the thousand shades of blue they can find in a single piece of ice.

You think there’s nothing in you to love. But the people who care about you know where to look.

\--

Its easy to think of people as fragile when so many of the ones you've cared about have died.

Here's the thing, though: humans are at the top of the food chain because they're frighteningly durable. They all die eventually, but much later than they might have because of their ability to endure horrific trauma and still keep breathing.

Jody saw her husband's blood on her son's teeth and adopted a girl who was almost a vampire. Charlie faced down the worst parts of herself and still smiles at you like she hasn't seen yours. There are countless others, too, people faced with the reality of ghosts and demons and monsters, who still get up every day and go to school, to work, to hang out with their friends.

You're a miracle in your own right, if you'd take the time to think about it, about all the cuts and broken bones, the concussions, the gunshot wounds, everything that's failed to kill you off. If you'd think about the kindness you're still capable of even in the face of all that horror and violence.

Here’s the thing: the people who love you are human, or near enough they may as well be.

And they’re not going down without a hell of a fight.

 


End file.
